You can call it an Apple Pay startup glitch or an evil conspiracy, both statements would have merit.

Per Re/code and 9to5Mac, some Bank of America account holders are now reporting that the new service is charging them twice for some transactions. It’s also been confirmed that Bank of America is in fact experiencing a technical error that is causing the double charges and is currently attempting to roll out a solution that will resolve the problem.

The glitch was apparently the result of a miscommunication between the bank’s systems and an unnamed payment network and wasn’t Apple’s fault according to the report. The bank said that only about 1,000 transactions were affected by the problem, which is a relatively minute number compared to the number of transactions likely being carried out nationwide today.

Apple posted great numbers across the board in yesterday’s fourth quarter financial statement, but there may be concerns about the iPad’s growth.

Per AppleInsider, Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook explained why he remains “very bullish” about iPads de spite the tablet’s sales not maintaining the growth rates of iPhones or Macs in every region.

In the September quarter, Apple sold 12.3M iPads, versus 14.1M in the year ago quarter. While lower than last year, iPad sales were slightly above Wall Street’s expectations. Apple continues to sell more iPads each month than the combined tablet sales of the rest of the top five tablet vendors, globally: Samsung, Asus, Lenovo and Acer

Addressing iPad sales in response to an analyst’s question, Cook stated, “I know that there’s a lot of negative commentary in the market but I have a little different perspective on it.

“Instead of looking at it every 90 days, if you back up and look at it, we’ve sold 237 million in just over four years. That’s about twice the number of iPhones we sold in the first four years.

Share this:

Apple’s fourth quarter revenues came in today and they’re everything investors could have asked for The Company posted quarterly revenue of US$42.1 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.5 billion. These results compare to revenue of $37.5 billion and net profit of $7.5 billion, or $1.18 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

Apple’s board of directors has declared a cash dividend of US$.47 per share of the Company’s common stock. The dividend is payable on November 13, 2014, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 10, 2014.

It’s also the day iOS 8.1 is released to millions upon millions of iOS device users.

Per The Mac Observer, Apple will be releasing iOS 8.1 later today. The update, which could be fairly large and take some time to download using an over-the-air update or iTunes, will also include the much-anticipated Apple Pay feature, which can be used as a payment option both in brick and mortar stores and using apps or within websites.

For what it’s worth, the banks seem to feel good about Apple’s upcoming Apple Pay system.

Per MacRumors and The Daily Dot, Apple Pay, which will be centered around tokens, or unique Device Account Numbers, to replace card numbers and transactions are verified through both one-time use security codes and Touch ID, has gotten the nod from several large banks.

The Daily Dot has spoken to several different banks working with Apple on the payments service, including Navy Federal Credit Union, USAA, Chase, and PNC, to get their thoughts on its security.

According to Navy Federal VP of credit cards Randy Hopper, the bank was “very excited” to see what Apple had developed, because it is “convenient, secure, and private.” Apple’s use of tokenization “addresses all points of weakness across the payment system.”

With Apple Pay en route, an assortment of banks are scrambling to be the consumers’ choice as to the default Apple Pay card.

“It’s a healthy competition,” JPMorgan Chase marketing chief Kristin Lemkau told the Financial Times. JPMorgan Chase launched Apple Pay-centered marketing campaigns on the same day as the service’s unveiling, and similar campaigns from Apple’s other partner banks quickly followed.

One example, according to AppleInsider and the Financial Times, has been Capital One targeting customers using email blasts. With every bank having budgeted significant amounts for this purpose, advertising is likely to appear nearly everywhere — though Apple is said to be doling out “strict guidelines” for initiatives featuring its long-awaited payments entry.

“You want to create an incentive for people to download their card in Apple Pay and use it as their default card,” Lemkau added.

Per Macworld, the company posted revenues of US$37.4 billion and a net profit of US$7.7 billion, making for a record June quarter for the company.

Those numbers were up from the third quarter of 2013, when Apple tallied US$35.3 billion in revenue and US$6.9 billion in net profit.

For the 2014 third quarter, Apple earned US$1.28 per diluted share, up from US$1.07 a diluted share the company earned in the year-ago quarter. Apple has declared a cash dividend of US$0.47 per share of the company’s common stock.

Little was said about Touch ID in the WWDC keynote except that the API would be opened to third-party developers for use in iOS 8. Craig Federighi did show a nice pie chart claiming that since the introduction of Touch ID on the iPhone 5s, 83% of users now use passcodes, up from the 49% that used their iPhone’s security previously. Just days after this announcement, PayPal is reportedly dipping their toes into the Touch ID API with hopes of incorporating fingerprint recognition into their iOS app’s authentication system. This isn’t really surprising as it has already done this on Android with the Samsung Galaxy S5. Hopefully the process will be more hacker-proof on iOS.

PayPal may just be the first of several companies including other mobile payment services, banks, and even large retail chains, to take advantage of access to Apple’s fingerprint scanner. Getting users familiar with using Touch ID for purchases may be just the first step in Apple’s own long rumored plans to get into the mobile payments game, using it in tandem with their Passbook software. Apple is expected to start building Touch ID sensors into all of its mobile hardware soon. Here’s hoping the technology becomes more reliable than many users’ past experiences or people may get frustrated with the process and just not use it.

So, you may be asking, “What is Clinkle?”. It would be a good question too since there hasn’t been a lot said about it given Clinkle’s “cloak of secrecy” about its development. In fact, during its beta period (still ongoing), employees were allowed to offer the service to friends and family with the specification that none of them could be journalists. Clinkle purports to be the next big thing in mobile payments, but frankly there is not much known about it other than some of the drama surrounding it. More on that in a moment.

Share this:

People who are used to getting their daily news from online news sources and blogs have finally given up on reading anything on the web, as the yearly trend to post fake stories to the internet on April 1st continues. The online statistics service AdNumbers stated today that ad revenue from online marketing and banner ads, as of 8:00 AM EST, was down nearly 80% as workers across the country resorted to getting some work done rather than be duped by mischievous journalists and bloggers. ADNumbers representative Nick O’Parkman stated, “Everyone is just fed up. They go to the internet to read news on April 1st and they don’t know what to believe anymore, so now they don’t bother! It is really cutting into our bottom line.”

Medical health journalist, Dr. Eugene Simmons suggests that in the past this trend has been dangerous to unsuspecting news readers, in particular investors and individuals with large stock portfolios, who might read that Apple Inc. is producing a line of computers with no keyboard, Tonk Hawk is promoting a working hoverboard, or that Apple plans to acquire iFixit.* Past hoaxes included rumors that Steve Ballmer was going to become CEO of Microsoft.** “Such outrageous stories have been know to cause heart-attacks, nervous break-downs, and unwarranted stock sellouts, which could hurt our already fragile economy”, says Simmons.

In a related story, the Onion News Network posted a TRUE news story today….and nobody noticed.

*Touché iFixit, touché

**oh right, that one was real, it just sounded far-fetched

[Re-posted with permission from myself who originally wrote a version of this for April 1st 2009]